Most personnel executives think Texas A&M pass rusher Myles Garrett is the best player in the draft. But that’s not a unanimous opinion, and one executive thinks the best player in the draft is a player who probably won’t even go in the first round: Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon.
Mixon will probably be a second-day pick because he was caught on tape punching a woman in 2014. But Bob McGinn of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asked 16 personnel executives to name the best player in the draft regardless of position, and one of them said it was Mixon.
Garrett was chosen by 11 of the 16 executives, while two named LSU safety Jamal Adams and one each named Alabama linebacker Reuben Foster, Stanford defensive lineman Solomon Thomas and Mixon.
Foster might not go in the first round, either, after a terrible Scouting Combine that saw him sent home early for an altercation with a health-care worker at the hospital, followed by a drug test in which he turned in a diluted urine sample, which the NFL considers to be the same as a positive test.
So teams that are willing to take character risks could strike gold in the draft by taking Foster or Mixon, players whose off-field incidents will result in them being available far later than they otherwise would be.